INCOMPREHENSIBLES CORNER 249 



too are creatures subject to repeated shocks, born to trouble, yet capa- 

 ble of adjustment. More complexly organized even than other crea- 

 tures, we can go beyond mere mental adjustment, on to new accom- 

 plishments and achievements; but all the more do we need the 

 influences that come through human kinship and the experience of 

 our race, all that is learned at a mother's knee and at the feet of alma 

 mater, and in the world of arts and letters. 



When I mentioned the experiments at Cayuga Lake, son:ie readers 

 may have thought of a shepherd who once tended flocks beside another 

 inland sea, who experienced in his own person both frustration and 

 adjustment, and who being a poet saw the parallel between his own 

 trials and joys and those of his sheep. Lifting his eyes to heaven, he 

 said as of a greater Sheplierd, '*Iie leadeth me beside the still waters. 

 Pie restoreth my soul." I have not chosen to carry, here, my concept 

 of the new mechanistics into the field of religion. Science and theology 

 tend to get heavy-handed with each other when discussing this subject. 

 La Mettrie was banished and his books were burned because of his 

 materialism. I think I do not risk any such fate because of mine. The 

 biologist realizes that the mechanism is so sensitive to outward influ- 

 ences and to stimuli so subtle that current science is not able to define 

 the limits of its sensitivity ; and therefore, while in the laboratory he 

 must base his own working hypothesis upon what he can see and meas- 

 ure, he will not in the present state of knowledge banish from the com- 

 pany of scholars any man whose personal hypothesis, or faith, takes 

 him all the way with the high-hearted old scientific humanist Sir 

 Thomas Browne, who bade us, "Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; 

 and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge im- 

 matorials in thy head ; ascend into invisibles ; fill thy spirit with spir- 

 ituals, with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and 

 thy life with the honour of God." 



Biophysics will not soon measure the wavelength of exaltation like 

 that; but even so, we shall go on exploring the body and brain. Let 

 not my learned friend be troubled; if and when all the circuits are 

 traced, when the last equation is written for the ionic movements that 

 run the works in eye, ear, nerve, muscle, and viscera, the mechanism, 

 however fully we then understand it, will still be complexly excitable 

 and still sensitive to all the subtleties of a subtle universe. New combi- 

 nations of neurones will go on being formed. Individuals will still be 

 unpredictable. Patterns of behavior will still have to be established 

 by training and education. Pluman history will not cease being made 

 nor poetry to be written. If all the nerve cells are to be kept firing in 

 the most effective sequence, some of the keys of the human mechanism 

 will still have to be operated by the professors of languages and litera- 

 ture, by artists, and by philosophers. 



